• by Wayne Friedman , June 5, 2015

Big Datamay be all the rage for almost all businesses these days. But that’s where the work begins for marketers in choosing the right data company.

The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) recently released a white paper imploring marketers to ask the right questions of their suppliers when it comes to the “quality” of the data.

“The growing number of consumer data sources and complexity of integrations across multiple consumer touch points has increasingly posed a challenge for end users to assess data quality,” said Jane Clarke, chief executive officer/managing director for Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement.

The study was produced by Gerard Broussard, principal of Pre-Meditated Media for CIMM. He said: “Asking the vital questions about data quality through an amplified lens of transparency will likely reset data quality standards across the advertising and media industry.”

Some of the those “transparency” questions include making inquiries about data freshness or recency; quality of data source; consumer authentication procedures; target model creation detail; target model testing for effectiveness; as well as data integration techniques.

Andy Fisher, chief analytics officer of Merkle, said: “It's also critical to the industry that we have clear detail on the techniques and methods used for consumer profile models, lookalike segments and data validation.”